6.8.13

My previous post mentions noise artifacts that can be produced within the camera . These are relatively rare and initially had me thinking I was looking at some legitimate and very unusual objects until some dark frame tests revealed their true identity. It is quite a coincidence that my next session produced a satellite
flash and a camera artifact close to each other on the same frame. This
two satellite plus artifact sequence shares the frame with the
distinctive quartet of stars in Delphinus.

4.8.13

As we are now in the period when Perseid meteors are likely to appear I've decided to use my wider 28mm lens to stand more chance of picking one up. No luck so far with meteors but another mystery single flash was detected (visible lower right).

I have found that sometimes the camera itself can occasionally
generate a bit of random noise (other than hot pixels) but such noise is
quite easy to identify on enlargement. My 28mm lens suffers some CA
around the edges when wide open which shows as offset spots of red. This
particular object has an associated red spot so confirms it came via
the lens.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

As an addition to my normal astrophotography I sometimes set up a camera to monitor a large area of sky for whatever appears in the way of aircraft, satellites, meteors, space debris etc. Occasionally something notable or unusual appears so I decided to make a blog devoted to those sequences that show the more interesting events.

The time-lapse sequences are made from a continuous series of exposures. Each exposure being usually between 15 - 60 seconds duration depending on conditions and the lens being used.(Lens and exposure info. reveals relative speed of objects across frame).

Short period events are posted as animated gifs with a duration of 0.5 second per frame. Longer sequences are video posted on YouTube.

WARNING: Some of the animated gifs are quite large so may take a while to load on slower connections.Many of the objects detected are often faint and small so a dark environment is required to see them clearly.